I am a compulsive traveler on a life-mission to visit every country on Earth. This blog is a journal of my experiences. I hope to share anecdotes, photos and useful information (like visa procedures!). If you want to contact me, please follow me on twitter: @insertindian.

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Tag Archives: Abu Dhabi

Earlier this year (2019) I visited the UAE on my US Tourist (B1/B2) Visa. Pretty seamless process. At checkin I wasn’t asked any questions about visa. Indian emigration saw my US visa and waved me through.

On arrival in Dubai, these are the steps:

Just before entering the immigration queue, there is a counter for Visa on Arrival.

You have to go there and purchase the visa on arrival – it cost me about AED 120.

If you go straight to the immigration counter, without purchasing the visa on arrival, they will send you back to purchase it.

Simple. No questions asked. And about half the cost of applying for the visa before traveling.

We have a 14 hour transit coming up in Abu Dhabi, flying Etihad. That’s enough time to step out of the airport, see the town and probably even see a couple of other towns!

It was fairly straight forward to apply for the transit visa:

Went to: https://www.ttsuaevisas.com/

Started an individual online application for myself and a separate one for my wife

Straightforward process – had to upload a bunch of documents in JPEG form only, including:

Previous UAE visas

Previous Schengen / USA / UK visas

Air Tickets

Hotel Bookings

Passport Copies

Only complication was the Hotel Bookings. Since we only have 14 hours during the day (not an overnight stop), we didn’t book any hotels. The system wouldn’t accept the transit visa application without a hotel booking. So I wrote a letter explaining why I don’t have a hotel booking and uploaded that in place of the hotel booking.

Visa was processed and arrived via email in 2 working days.

One thing I didn’t know as it was not mentioned in any official communication – we need Etihad to do an “OK to Board” endorsement on our booking PNR. Luckily our travel agent (The Travel Partner) knew about this and told us on time. Process was simple – I sent an email to OTBUAEVisa@etihad.ae with visa and ticket copies for both me and my wife. They responded within 24 hours and did the OTB (OK to Board) as they call it.